He scrolled and read quickly.
Exclusive membership. Application by referral or direct submission. Verification of all members. Physical correspondence only for account activation. Curated introductions based on detailed profiles.
A dating app?
Not quite a dating app, the website was careful to say. A membership. An introduction service. The kind of thing that sent you a letter in an ivory envelope with a clean typeface and called itself Ember and wanted you to feel that what washappening was considered and deliberate and not at all like swiping through photographs on your phone at midnight.
Darcy put his phone face down on the counter.
He picked up his coffee. The mug suddenly felt too hot, so he put it down again.
She had applied to a dating service. Elizabeth had applied to a dating service and they had written back to her at this address, at James and Charlotte's address, at the address where Darcy was currently standing in the kitchen at eight forty-five in the morning with a coffee he could not drink and a feeling in his chest that he did not immediately have a name for.
He picked up his phone again. Looked at the website. Put it down.
It was none of his business. She was an adult. She had said so herself, approximately forty minutes ago, in this same kitchen, while walking out of the front door. Which was true. Which was entirely correct. She owed him no account of anything.
Regardless, something in Darcy’s chest tightened at the thought of Elizabeth on a dating service.
He caught himself, almost immediately, reminding himself that this was precisely the sort of thing he had promised never to concern himself with. There had been reasons for that promise.
There had always been reasons.
Eight years of them.
He had stopped asking, eventually. Two years in, when it had become clear that whatever answer she had chosen not to give him was not one she intended to give at all. He had accepted that. He had moved on from the asking, if not from the not knowing.
And yet—
Darcy’s hand tightened briefly around the edge of the counter.
Seeing her here. Hearing her. The quiet, habitual way she argued with him as though nothing had ever been left unfinished between them. The memory, unhelpfully immediate, of her standing in this same kitchen in a nightgown, entirely unimpressed with him.
It was making something shift.
He did not examine it.
Darcy’s eyes returned to the stack of envelopes; his gaze settled on one in particular. The one from Ember.
Then he moved it slightly to the left so it was not the very first thing she saw, which would make it obvious that he had noticed it, which he was not going to be obvious about.
***
The ladies arrived just before three p.m., Mia came in first, her bag slipping from her shoulder and landing in the hallway with a dull, familiar thud.
“Mr. Darcy,” she called, already halfway out of her shoes.
Darcy looked up from the sofa. “Mia.”
“How was your day?” she asked, not waiting for the answer before moving further inside.
“Productive,” he said. “Yours?”
“Fine. However, I have got an essay due Friday. I will survive.”
“I have no doubt.”
She dropped onto the sofa and reached for the remote, her attention already shifting.
